Date archives "October 2008"

An infrastructure to protect free E-Speech

Aram Sinnreich and Masha Zager have written an excellent overview article that describes the dangers to free digital speech. Amongst the danger listed and described are: * Searches without warrant * Network Neutrality * Asymmetrical Internet Access *Walled Garden approaches They then discuss counter-strategies, dismissing the first one as impractical at the present stage, presumable… Continue reading

Carlota Perez at TTU (Part I): “The theory of great surges”

I was blessed to attend Carlota Perez’s two weeks intensive lectures titled “Technical Change, Techno-Economic Paradigms and Changing Opportunities for Development” held at the Technological University of Tallinn.  In a series of posts I will try to summarize the basic ideas and theories that are also explained in detail in her brilliant book “Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital” published… Continue reading

Ethics, Finance and Crisis,

(an excerpt from the Ethical Economy book, sneak preview at www.ethicaleconomy.com) These might seem like three terms picked at random. However I would like to suggest that beyond its direct, contingent causes, the current financial crisis is a symptom of the emergence of a new economic system, where value is increasingly based on ethical factors,… Continue reading

How The People Formerly Known as the Employers are exploiting ‘free’ media workers

As Eben Moglen once said, peer production is the wet dream of both capitalists and communists. In my interpretation this means: as the possibilities for non-alienated voluntary participation in common projects increases, so does its use as free labour for for-profit companies. Mark Deuze has an interesting analysis of how this is being played out… Continue reading

Current status and difficulties of consumer-driven design

Matt Sinclair of the We don’t do retro blog has been interviewed by Duann Scott for Ponoko’s blog. In one of the questions of this interesting interview, Matt gives a good feeling for the concrete difficulties facing self-produced designs and 3D printing. Matt Sinclair on the current limitations of customer-driven design: “There are two main… Continue reading

We need to open source intentional geo-engineering

I am not calling for geoengineering as the solution to global warming. We know nowhere near enough to make (re)terraforming a plausible or safe option. Our best pathway to avoiding climate disaster remains the rapid reduction and elimination of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. But I am calling for us to learn more about geotechnologies. Like it… Continue reading

RiP: an open source documentary on Remix Culture and its Copyright implications

Via: “”In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But… Continue reading

A cultural critique of Second Life

…the Sim series, like all other educational software, ignore other forms of cultural storage and renewal – such as elder knowledge and the need to develop symbolic forms of expression (music, dance, narrative, ceremony) that do not diminish the processes of Nature… [M]aking decisions that involve the use of modern technologies leaves the students without… Continue reading